Applicants claim priority from EP 16178550.6 filed 8 Jul. 2017, which is incorporated herein by reference.
Sugar is an ingredient for bread that adds sweetness to the bread, which is highly appreciated by many consumers as a pleasant taste. It has also been used to mask the off-flavour of certain additives, such as calcium propionate (an anti-mould agent), that are or have been used in the preparation of bread. The amount of sugar added to typical bread recipes can vary, depending on the type of bread and the typical demands for that bread in terms of taste, flavour, off-flavour masking, softness and shelf life. Known recipes exist, wherein the amount of sugar added exceeds 10 wt. %, or even exceeds 15 wt. % or 20 wt. %, based on dry weight.
However, a high daily intake of bulk sugars, such as sucrose, fructose and glucose, is considered to impose a serious risk to health. Excessive amounts of sugar intake are for instance considered to contribute to an increased risk of obesity, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Further, sugar is a contributor to tooth decay. Various alternatives to sugars are known in food technology in order to impart a sweet taste to foods and beverages. These include high-intensity sweeteners and various polyols. Examples of high-intensity sweeteners include aspartame, saccharin, sucralose and steviol, neotame and Ace-K. An example of a polyol is sorbitol However, these compounds also offer disadvantages, varying from regulatory restrictions, distrust by a substantial part of the public due to their artificial nature (for the synthetic sweeteners), observance of an off-flavour and/or unpleasant mouthfeel by a substantial number of the consumers and bad physiological tolerance by certain consumers (e.g. sorbitol can have a laxative effect in high dosage) to technological problems in the food application. Namely, if one simply replaces the sugar for any other sweetener, this has unpredictable effects on other qualities of the dough and/or the bread, e.g. dough stickiness, dough extensibility, loaf volume, crumb softness, crust colour, etc.
Thus, there is a need for an alternative bread having a sweet taste, containing less or no added sugar without needing to include high intensity sweeteners or a polyol (like sorbitol), whilst maintaining satisfactory organoleptic properties in addition to sweetness, having a satisfactory shelf life, in particular such a bread which can be made essentially fully from natural ingredients and/or that has a reduced caloric value compared to a conventional bread sweetened with a sugar, in particular glucose, fructose or sucrose.